The need for imparting substantive fragrances as well as anti-static properties to articles of clothing being washed and/or dried has been, over the past century, well-recognized in the prior art. Various attempts at fulfilling this need using various delivery systems have been disclosed in the prior art. There is a substantial presence in the international market place of fabric conditioning sheets containing perfumes and, in addition anti-static agents, for example products marketed under the trademark “ALL”, trademark of Lever Brothers Company of Edgewater, N.J., described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,133,226 and 6,297,210, the specifications of which are herein incorporated by reference, the product disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,145,595, the specification of which is herein incorporated by reference, and “CLINGFREE” trademark of Reckitt Benckiser N.V. of Schiphol, Netherlands. Furthermore, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,436,894 and 6,235,705 the specifications of which are herein incorporated by reference disclose a process for providing anti-static and scent to clothes being laundered in a dryer by placing with the clothing being dried, a reusable mesh bag containing ‘pearls’ having a diameter of between 0.1 inches and 1 inch (2.54 mm up to 25.40 mm) composed of polyethylene and polypropylene which have absorbed therein perfume and anti-static agents which serve to dissipate an electrostatic charge on the clothing in order to avoid clothing ‘cling’ subsequent to the washing and/or drying operations. The disclosure of U.S. Pat. No. 6,436,894 indicates that a whitening agent such as titanium dioxide as well as a blowing agent can be added to the ‘pearls’.
The use of currently marketed fabric softener “sheets” as exemplified herein as well as the use of particles, the infrastructures of which consist of unmodified polyethylene and/or polypropylene polymers disclosed in such patents as U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,436,894 and 6,235,705 has, however, been determined to be inadequate in providing efficacious delivery of the perfume and/or antistatic agents to fabrics being washed and/or dried. Furthermore, ‘pearls’ having effective diameters of greater than 10 millimeters as disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,436,894 and 6,235,705, have been found to handicap the fabric washing and/or drying process as a result of intermittently causing the washing machine and dryer to go into an uncontrollable ‘off-balance’ mode during the washing and drying procedures.
Although polymeric perfume particles having effective diameters of from 0.5 mm up to 10 mm and having infrastructures fabricated from ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymers are disclosed to be useful in time release fragrance sachets for air freshening, particularly for use in clothes storage cabinets in U.S. Pat. No. 6,213,409, the disclosure of which is herein incorporated by reference. U.S. Pat. No. 6,213,409 does not disclose processes for utilizing reusable sachets containing polymeric fragrance particles for the purpose of imparting substantive fragrances to fabrics during any of the cycles of fabric washing and/or fabric drying operations.